


The Slate Wiped Clean

by Ruuger



Category: Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21837004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/pseuds/Ruuger
Summary: Logan tries to adjust to his new life in the changed timeline.Set right after Days of Future Past ends.
Relationships: Jean Grey & Logan, Logan & Yukio (Marvel), Logan (X-Men) & Kitty Pryde, Logan (X-Men)/Kayla Silverfox, Logan (X-Men)/Yashida Mariko
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	The Slate Wiped Clean

As the students disappeared into the classrooms, Logan made his way through the empty corridors of the school. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen it - it had been years ago, before the sentinels and the war - and in any case this wasn't the same school. It could have been the same, but there were small differences that kept his mind on edge: walls painted in different color, smells he couldn't recognise. Seeing Hank, Marie, Jean, and Scott alive again had shook him to his core, but somehow it was these little details that disturbed even him more, that made him wonder if he was just imagining it all. 

Because if this was just a dream (and if it was a dream, it was a dream he'd had so many times), why would he dream those little details wrong? And yet at the same time he was afraid to believe - or even hope - that what he was seeing really was true.

 _We'll talk more about this later, Logan,_ the Professor had said, with a hint of pity in his voice that suggested to Logan that the life he couldn't remember was much better than the one that he could. 

As he walked past the entrance hall, he saw Marie standing at the bottom of the stairs, talking to Bobby. She caught his eye and smiled at him, and he felt cold shivers run down his spine at the memory of her bloody and mangled body the last time he had seen her. 

He shook his head and turned on his heels. 

He needed a drink. Badly.

To his relief the kitchen was in the same place where it had always been, although the tiles were a slightly different shade of blue from what he remembered. He stepped in but then stopped in the doorway when he realised that he wasn't alone.

There was a girl sitting at the table, hunched over a book, the fingers of her left hand playing with her hair as she turned the pages.

Kitty.

She looked younger somehow, even though by all logic she should have been the exact same age she was the last time he'd seen her. But of course this Kitty was also different. Not the world-weary soldier who'd risked her life and sanity to change the past, but just a young woman passing time between classes. This was the Kitty that should have been.

As if sensing that he was watching her, she looked up from her book and smiled. "Hi Logan."

"Hey," he replied, and then turned to the fridge and looked inside, trying to hide the emotions that he knew must be obvious on his face. He'd have to talk to someone about what had happened, but not now, not yet, not when he still wasn't entirely certain that he wasn't just losing his mind. He'd keep it to himself until he'd had a chance to talk to the Professor.

"Go ahead, everyone knows."

He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Knows what?"

"That you keep beer in the vegetable box. Even the students know, but they don't dare to touch it because they're afraid of you."

He turned back to the fridge and pulled open the vegetable box to find two Buds stashed underneath a slightly soggy head of lettuce.

"Huh. Go me."

He opened the bottle with a snikt of his claws, and let the ice cold brew wash away his tension. 

Beer. That was another thing he'd missed. Not as much as he'd missed Jean or Marie or being able to go outside without the fear of being killed by a sentinel, but it was nevertheless pretty high up on the list. 

Feeling calmer again, he closed the fridge and walked over to Kitty. "Whatcha reading?"

Kitty closed the book, a look almost like embarrassment briefly flashing on her face. "Oh, it's a book about quantum mechanics."

"Isn't that a little advanced for the kiddies?"

Kitty shook her head, running her fingers across the spine of the book. "It's not classwork. I'm reading it to better understand my powers. The way I see it, my power works by allowing me to pass my atomic particles through the spaces between the atoms of other solid object. It's a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which has to do with Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the wave–particle duality..." She looked up and then smiled, and Logan realised that it must have been obvious in his face that he couldn't understand a word that she was saying.

"I hope there won't be a pop quiz afterwards," he said.

She smiled at him, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her this happy. "It's just something I've been thinking about lately. How theoretically, at least, my power might not be limited to just phasing through objects. That it might even be possible for me to-"

"-travel back in time?"

She looked at him quizzically for a moment, and then shrugged. "It's just a silly idea, really."

He emptied the last dregs of his beer and tossed the bottle in the trash.

"Don't be so sure, kid."

* * *

The beer had momentarily calmed his mind, but as he returned to the hallway, he found his previous unease return. To find Marie and Jean alive again was like having all his dreams suddenly come true, but they weren't the only people he'd lost.

When a small boy passed him, Logan grabbed his sleeve to stop him.

"Where's my office?"

The boy gave him a wide-eyed stare.

"Is- is this a test?"

"If I'm a teacher, then I must have an office. Where is it?"

The boy pointed towards the stairs. "It's down the corridor and to the right."

Logan let go of the boy's sleeve and patted him on the head absently before heading towards the stairs. "Thanks, kid. You just earned yourself an A in history." 

He entered his office and closed the door behind him before sitting in front of the video phone. For a few minutes he just sat there, staring at the screen and trying to collect his thoughts, until he finally dialed Mariko's number.

The last he'd heard of her was when she'd helped him get a group of teenagers out of the country after the Mutant Travel Law had been implemented. They'd tried to stay in contact, but after the war had started, the communications had stopped. Rumour had it that she'd managed to avoid the sentinels by hiding in another secret underground facility that Yashida had built in Hidaka mountains, but Logan had learned the hard way that rumours, especially good ones, were rarely to be trusted.

He felt a sense of relief when Yukio's face appeared on the screen.

"Is Mariko home? I need to talk to her."

Yukio frowned, her eyes narrowing as she studied his face. "How did you get this number?"

He was about to give her some smart-ass reply when the truth of the situation hit him. Of course, if Jean never died, then he never went to Yukon, never met Yukio, and the world was a very different place. He rubbed his hand across his face. 

"We've never met, have we?"

"No," Yukio said, giving him the kind of look one might give to a raving madman on the street. She tilted her head. "Your path is strange."

"Tell me about it." Logan shook his head. "Just tell me this. Is Mariko alright? Is she safe?"

Yukio hesitated for a few seconds before answering. "She's safe."

"Good." He reached for the end call button, and then hesitated. "Hey, kid. How am I going to die?"

Yukio tilted her head again. She was quiet for a moment, and then said: "In bed, surrounded by your loved ones."

"Is that a promise?"

She just smiled at him. "Goodbye, strange man. And don't call us again."

The screen went black, his own reflection replacing Yukio's face.

"Is something wrong, Logan?"

He looked up to find Jean standing in the doorway. She was cradling a mug of tea in her hands as she leaned against the doorjamb, watching him. She was even more beautiful than he remembered, blindingly sharp and real compared to the fading mirage of his dreams.

He shook his head. "No, just a little tired, that's all."

She smiled at him, clearly not believing his words. "You seem troubled. I could feel it halfway across the building."

When Logan looked at her, he could almost smell burning flesh, could almost feel the suffocating heat of her powers and the weight of her dead body in his arms. He shuddered at the memory of it, covering his face as he tried to block the memories that he shouldn't even have anymore now that she was standing in front of him, alive and unharmed.

"Logan? Are you sure you're alright?"

When he looked up again, he saw that she was now standing right next to him, her hip resting on the edge of the desk as she looked down at him, worry etched on her face.

"Are you reading my mind?"

She looked appalled that he would even suggest it. "Of course not."

"Do it."

"What?"

"Do it. Read my mind."

He needed to tell someone what he'd seen, what he'd lived through, but there were no words that could explain it, and he found himself hoping that maybe she could understand without him needing to tell her. Or perhaps he just wanted to touch her, to convince himself that she really was there and not just a figment of his fevered mind.

Jean was still smiling when she carefully set the mug down on his desk, and then, as if indulging a child, reached towards him. Just as her fingers were about to touch his skin, she hesitated.

"Logan-" she started, but he didn't let her finish and just took her hand and pressed it against his face.

When she touched him, he was suddenly reminded of the first time they'd met, back at her lab, so many lifetimes away. The difference was that when they'd met, he couldn't remember anything, whereas now he remembered too much. Except that everything was different now, so maybe that hadn't happened either. 

They remained frozen for a few seconds, her palm warm and soft against his skin, then suddenly her eyes widened and she flinched back. 

"Oh." There were tears brimming in her eyes, and she looked at him with such pity that Logan began to regret what he'd let her do. 

"Oh, you poor thing," she whispered and took a step back, breaking the contact. "You have forgotten."

"What's going on here?"

They were both startled by the sound of Scott's voice in the doorway. Jean looked at Scott, tears running down her face, and then back and Logan, before turning away and running out out of the room. 

Scott watched her go, and then turned back to Logan.

"What the hell did you do to her?"

Logan said nothing, just pushed past him after Jean. As he headed down the corridor, he could hear Scott's muttered "asshole" behind him.

He wanted to talk to Jean again, wanted to explain everything to her or maybe wanted her to explain everything to him. She was nowhere to be found, however, and he eventually ended up back in the room where he'd woken up. It was in the same corridor where his room used to be, but even though the location was the same, the room was nothing like it had been back when he'd still lived at the mansion. It was only by the smell that he could be sure that it really was his. 

A picture on the window sill caught his eye, and he picked it up. It was a photograph of himself, standing next to a woman. He frowned. The woman had her arm around him, and they were both smiling, but he couldn't remember having ever even seen her before. He couldn't look away from the picture, couldn't help wondering if she was someone he knew in this timeline, someone he'd just-

_You have forgotten._

The frame slipped from his numb fingers, the glass smashing into pieces as it hit the floor. He could feel the echoes of Jean's touch in his mind, like the sound of roaring flames and beating wings as the memories suddenly came back to him. But it was not the memories of this life that were returning, it was the other memories he had buried away so many years ago, and which Jean had now set free. The life before he met Marie at that truck stop in Laughlin City; not just flashes and fragments, but all of it. 

His family. Victor. Stryker.

Kayla.

_You have forgotten._

He'd always known there were still holes in his mind. Walls that the Professor had tried to break down and failed. But the Professor had never been as strong as Jean could have been. That she was now.

And he couldn't decide if he was angry or grateful that she had now finally given those memories back to him.

_James?_

_James?_

"James, are you alright?" 

He turned around, and through his tears he could see the ghost of Kayla standing in front of him. She was older than he remembered, the first few lines of crows feet in the corners of her eyes and stray strands of grey streaking her hair. She was looking at him with such kindness and love that he couldn't understand how he could have ever forgotten about her.

"Jean told me you were looking for me." She frowned and crossed the room to him, touching his arm. "What's wrong, James? You look like you've seen a ghost."

He flinched at her touch, unable to understand how it was possible that she was alive again. Unless, unless, unless... 

"Kayla..." He whispered, and then pulled her into his arms. She felt solid and real, and yet even as he held her, he could feel the weight of her dead body as he held her, the memory of her death more real in his mind than the present moment. It felt like the moment just before waking up, when you suddenly realise that everything around you is a dream, and things that were solid and real only a second before are now fading away, no matter how hard you try to hold on to them. 

Logan closed his eyes and wrapped his arms tighter around Kayla. But if this was a dream, it was a dream that he never wanted to wake up from.


End file.
